Grant: Rangers CEO Nolan Ryan laughs at notion that offseason was a 'disaster'

3/11

Louis DeLuca/Staff Photographer

2. Cruz in question: The Rangers already lost OF Josh Hamilton, but they could face life without Nelson Cruz for awhile, too. In late January, a Miami New Times story linked Cruz and other players to a Miami clinic that specialized in performance-enhancing drugs. MLB is looking into the allegations, and though no punitive action has been taken by the league yet, it could still be coming. The standard punishment for a first-time PED offense is a 50-game suspension.

SURPRISE, Ariz. – In the last six months, Nolan Ryan has put to bed two completely different seasons for the Rangers. The way, he describes it, they are almost mirror images.

The 2012 baseball season started with such promise and ended with disaster. The 2012 off-season began with such disaster and ended with promise.

The off-season picked up right where the regular season ended, with the Rangers’ plans collapsing one after another until all their major free agent and trade acquisition targets were off the market. The Rangers left the winter meetings thinking they had a chance at landing Justin Upton, Zack Greinke and bringing back Josh Hamilton.

Much like Hamilton in last season’s finale, they swung and missed often.

What Ryan likes is how well the Rangers recovered. Champions adjust. The Rangers adjusted. What looked like an unmitigated disaster in December, now has taken some shape.

“I laugh at comments that it was a ‘disaster,’ or that it was ‘the worst in the organization’s history’,” Ryan said Friday, about three hours before the Rangers played their first exhibition of the spring to a 5-5 tie with Kansas City.

“I think our baseball guys stepped back and looked at the landscape and said, ‘How can we make this club better?’,” Ryan added. “We are a club that wants to build from within. We don’t want to give up our young talent. We realize we have to be willing to do it with that young talent. I know this: we are a better ballclub than the day Josh signed with the Angels.”

The question, though, is not about that day. On that day, Ryan said, the “pucker factor was pretty big.”

The question is whether this Rangers team is – or will be – better than what the 2012 Rangers ended up being?

“I think that’s one you have to give some time and thought to,” Ryan said. “You have to let it play out.”

The playing out of things began Friday, and it was easy to see why it may take some time to figure things out. The Rangers do plan to count on a number of young players, and those young players don’t grow up overnight.

All of the concerns were evident on the first day of the spring training schedule.

Leonys Martin, who will likely replace Hamilton for the bulk of the time in center field, showed that he’s still has plenty to learn about baserunning. He was thrown out trying to steal without ever paying any attention to the pitcher’s move.

Alexi Ogando, who is transitioning back to the starting rotation after a year in the bullpen, couldn’t find the inner half of the plate.

Tanner Scheppers, who the Rangers would like to figure prominently in the bullpen, still has trouble getting the ball down in the zone and can’t seem to make it move at all to throw a hitter off.

Did we mention the 6-foot, 165 pound elephant (OK, maybe that didn’t sound as imposing as it was supposed to) in the room: Jurickson Profar? Three hours before the first pitch, Ryan said he thought the Rangers would have to be able to guarantee 350 at-bats to carry Profar as a “utility” player, and he didn’t see how they were going to be able to do that. When he got in the game, Profar looked bad on a strikeout and let a ground ball roll off his glove.

It was quite an inauspicious start. It also means nothing.

The Rangers have another 37 games to tune up for the regular season and then may jockey for position for the four months after that. It is by that time that the young players should have settled into roles, that pitchers who begin the season on the disabled list will be back to reinforce the staff, and that a supportive ownership group will be able to reach back into their fat wallets and approve payroll-increasing trades.

“Our position is a little more guarded,” Ryan said. “We have more questions. But I think we are going to compete very hard in this division.”

The Rangers may not have looked better than last year’s team when they took the field Friday, but the possibilities are far more likely they will be better at the finish than at the start.

And if 2012 – and the off-season that followed – have taught the Rangers anything, it’s not how you start that matters, but how you finish.

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